Point of sale electronic transactions, including credit and debit card transactions, electronic check conversions, age verification, and the like, are becoming increasingly prevalent as technology improvements in data processing equipment and telecommunications bring greater computing power to retail locations. One area of significant volume and importance in point of sale (“POS”) electronic transactions is payment of bills, such as utility bills, credit card bills, telephone bills, insurance premiums, and the like. As many as 20 billion bills are estimated to be paid in person each year in the United States. Historically, many such in-person bill payments have been made at “store-front” locations owned and managed by, e.g. the utility company receiving payment. Banks have also provided a service of accepting payment of bills on behalf of utility companies and other billing entities. Increasingly, retail locations such as grocery stores and convenience stores have entered the market of accommodating in-person bill payments. These POS locations are becoming increasingly prevalent and important to in-person bill payment transactions, as utility companies and banks become less willing to incur the costs associated with maintaining store-front locations (in the case of utility companies) and associated with handling the actual payment transactions (in the case of both utility companies and banks).
In addition to handling in-person bill payment, POS locations are increasingly offering many other electronic transactions, such as obtaining authorization for credit card and debit card purchases, electronic money order purchases, age verification, obtaining validation for check purchases, and the like. Typically, a service provider will provide only one type of electronic transaction capability to the POS location. For instance, a credit card authorization service provider will provide the POS location with a terminal for inputting, or “swiping,” a credit card and with the necessary telecommunication connections and equipment to connect the terminal to the service bureau, where the credit card purchase can be authorized in real-time. Likewise, a different service provider will provide the POS location with a different terminal and telecommunication interface for providing check validation services. Yet a third service provider might provide yet a third piece of equipment for handling money order purchases at the POS location. This is disadvantageous, as space is often a valuable commodity to retailers and the need for multiple terminals to accommodate multiple electronic transactions requires significant amounts of floor space or counter space and is not cost effective.
Another shortcoming in the prior art is the effort involved in memorializing and verifying prior transactions. This problem is particularly acute in the realm of in-person bill payments. Such a transaction typically involves a bill payer bringing the bill received from, e.g. a utility company (henceforth called a “biller”), into the POS location, such as a convenience store. The store clerk will take the utility bill and will manually input relevant information (such as account number, amount due, and the like) into the bill payment terminal. The store clerk will then receive payment for the bill and will input this information into the POS terminal as well. Inevitably, clerical error will result in the incorrect account being credited, or the account being credited with the wrong dollar amount, or some other error. In such a case, the original bill must be retrieved and the information contained thereon compared to the information input into the system. This requires that the bills be stored and organized for retrieval at the POS location. This requirement places a significant burden on the POS location management and personnel. Several days are typically required to retrieve the bill from the POS location, if it can be located at all, before billing errors or questions can be resolved.
Another disadvantage with prior art solutions to POS financial transactions is that the information stored at the POS terminal may not always be completely up to date. This is because the POS terminals are typically self-contained units that communicate with a base computer system (provided by the service provider) only when necessary to retrieve or send information to the base system. Typically, such terminals are updated on a periodic basis, such as after business hours, with information regarding the types of services to be provided, the types of bills for which payment can be received, and the like. If changes occur during the day, the POS terminal might not have the updated information. This can result in the POS terminal accepting payments for a utility company that is no longer authorizing such POS payments. Likewise, if the POS location itself is no longer authorized to accept payments (perhaps for failure to timely forward the payments to the service provider), then the POS terminal will be unaware of that restriction until the next periodic update.
These and other shortcomings in the prior art can be overcome by employing the present invention, which is described herein with reference to several preferred embodiments.